Chennai

At the time, Dr Sahin and his company, BioNTech, were little known outside the small world of European biotechnology start-ups. BioNTech, which Dr Sahin founded with his wife, Dr Ozlem Tureci, was mostly focused on cancer treatments. It had never brought a product to market. COVID-19 did not yet exist

But his words proved prophetic. On Monday, BioNTech and Pfizer announced that a vaccine for the coronavirus developed by Dr Sahin and his team was more than 90 pc effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers who had no evidence of having previously been infected. The results vaulted BioNTech and Pfizer to the front of the race to find a cure for a disease that has killed more than 1.2 million people worldwide.

“There are not too many companies on the planet which have the capacity and the competence to do it so fast as we can do it,” Dr Sahin said in an interview last month. “So it felt not like an opportunity, but a duty to do it, because I realised we could be among the first coming up with a vaccine.” After BioNTech had identified several promising vaccine candidates, Dr Sahin concluded that the company would need help to rapidly test them, win approval from regulators and bring the best candidate to market. BioNTech and Pfizer had been working together on a flu vaccine since 2018, and in March, they agreed to collaborate on a coronavirus vaccine.

Dr Sahin, 55, was born in Iskenderun, Turkey. When he was 4, his family moved to Cologne, Germany, where his parents worked at a Ford factory. Early in his career, he met Dr Tureci. She had early hopes to become a nun and ultimately wound up studying medicine. Dr Tureci, now 53 and the chief medical officer of BioNTech, was born in Germany, the daughter of a Turkish physician who immigrated from Istanbul. On the day they were married, Dr Sahin and Dr Tureci returned to the lab after the ceremony. In 2001, Dr Sahin and Dr Tureci founded Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, which developed drugs to treat cancer using monoclonal antibodies. After several years they founded BioNTech as well, looking to use a wider range of technologies, including messenger RNA, to treat cancer.

Dr Sahin and Dr Tureci sold Ganymed for $1.4 bn in 2016. Last year, BioNTech sold shares to the public; in recent months, its market value has soared past $21 billion, making the couple among the richest in Germany. The two billionaires live with their teenage daughter in a modest apartment near their office. They ride bicycles to work. They do not own a car. Dr Sahin said he and Dr Tureci learned about efficacy data on Sunday night and marked the moment by brewing Turkish tea at home. “We celebrated, of course,” he said. “It was a relief.” 

— NYT©2020

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